1080: Avalanche

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NST talks about their upcoming title.

By IGN Staff

Today, Nintendo hosted a teleconference with Nintendo Software Technology Corp. (NST) about the upcoming snowboarder 1080: Avalanche. Several media outlets were listening to the words of NST's President, Mr. Yamashiro (Wave Race: Blue Storm) and the Lead Game Designer, Vivek Melwani, Lead Game Designer, regarding their upcoming title 1080: Avalanche. We've transcribed Mr. Yamashiro's and Mr. Melwani's introductions followed by a brief question and answer session.

Mr. Yamashiro, President NST and Producer of 1080: Avalanche:

I'd like to take the opportunity to talk about the project we just finished thanks to a lot of team effort. We're located in Redmond, WA, in the same camp as Nintendo of America. The development team members come from all over the world -- USA, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Europe, and Canada. We've developed a Nintendo quality game with an international flavor.

We've created an original product based off 1080 on the Nintendo 64. Right after finishing Wave Race: Blue Storm two years ago, Mr. Miyamoto offered us the chance to work on the 1080 sequel project. The team was really excited for this challenge, but we feared the pressure that would come from making a sequel for a game as great as 1080. We agreed to work on the Avalanche project after talking with the original's director from EAD and Mr. Miyamoto. As we came up with concepts for Avalanche, we constantly asked what is 1080? Hopefully, we'll be able to answer that throughout the rest of this conference.

Vivek Melwani, Lead Game Designer and Director of 1080: Avalanche:

Mr. Yamashiro kept asking the team (of about twenty-five people) what is 1080, what is the key to 1080? As soon as we got the project the first thing we did was research the N64 version, which is a game we really like a lot and that consumers really like. People still call it the best snowboarding game ever. It was a really tough act to follow.

We researched the game a lot -- partly by playing the original, but also through some real life experience. We took some trips to the mountains (Mt. Baker and Whistler). Most of the team hadn't snowboarded before so it was a great chance to learn. The majority instantly fell in love with the sport and it really pumped us for getting this game done. We also watched a lot of documentaries, talked to snowboarders, and even contracted a local semi-pro rider to answer questions.

The challenge was to keep the 1080 feel while creating a new experience for the players, since people don't want to play the same game over again. We focused on the essence of the N64 version -- we found that the controls were the key thing, and the feel of the snow surfaces. We kept those elements and went forward to create a brand new game.

Miyamoto was always on our side, we would send builds to him and he'd advise us on mechanisms to improve the game. We also listened to comments people had about the previous version. The major problems seemed to be landing and the trick system. Many people thought the trick system was too challenging and too complex, so we focused on that aspect.

While we developed the game, we started experimenting a lot with the surfaces, which is when we came up with the interactive environments. We created a small portion of the course that was interactive and players were really getting excited by this mechanism so after several experiments we showed these tests to EAD. We decided that creating an avalanche would be a great experience for the player. So, we did a lot of research by watching documentaries and reading books so that in the end we were able to pull off a really cool avalanche. It was a difficult, time consuming task, but it's turned out really immersive and really cool. I hope you have a chance to experience it.

Q & A

Question: Can you give details about what has been improved since Nintendo Gamers' Summit?

NST: The last moments are when a lot of polish went into the game. We added a lot of cool snow effects at the last minute and a lot of attention went into the avalanche sequence. That was a challenging task (avalanche) that came down to the last minute because it was really important to us. We also focused on more of the extreme sides of things and various other knick knacks.

Question: Can you give any details on Dolby support>

NST:1080 supports Dolby Pro Logic II. We took pains to make a fully immersive, highly interactive sound-scape -- not a canned soundtrack. There's a series of interactive triggers that changes what you hear depending on where you are in the avalanche and where you are in the courses. You can hear the whine of a pole proceed to the rear of you as you pass it. We also added more licensed music from up and coming bands and we included some in-house music relatively late.